~ Grace: The Final Frontier

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Intelligence

Intelligence is a funny subject. A bit like quality – everyone knows what it means but no one can really define it.

IQ testing is supposed to measure intelligence but I have my doubts. At best it measures a persons capacity for intelligence – whether they use it or not is up to them. A persons result is very much dependent on their reading and writing speed and ability. These would appear to be functions of learning rather than functions of intelligence.

Then there is what I call the IQ enigma. An IQ score is a statistic derived from comparing raw scores achieved on tests. In my initial discussion I posed the question “How much of our mental ability is taken up providing our metaphysical rose coloured glasses? IQ testing shows that most people with IQ’s in the top 1% of measured ability have raw scores in the lowest 25% of measured capability. The power of statistics to conceal truth!

The only difference is those who achieve the outlying scores don’t take part in the archetype system and can thus use all of their mental faculties to do the test. I offer the following examples to illustrate how the education system will need to change to accommodate the next generations of students.

I don’t think I am overly intelligent – some of the decisions I have made in my life would tend to indicate I am dumber than both Dumb and Dumber. But I can perform mental tasks at unusual, but perfectly normal, speeds. Many years ago I did an IQ test – I completed it in 25% of the time allocated and was advised my IQ was in the 1% group. In my 40’s I enrolled in University and found I could do 3 hour exams in 45 minutes scoring distinctions and high distinctions. Part of the speed is due to being a very quick reader.

I was studying computer programming at Uni. We were given assignments with 3 weeks to complete them. I would quickly scan the assignment when it was handed out then put it away. That night I would take the paper out and simply type – as though from memory – the working program. An hour to type and another half hour to correct my typing mistakes. The next night I would do the challenge – an addition to the program for extra marks – which would take only a few minutes. In less that 2 hours I was getting 120% per assignment while my classmates were struggling to complete the base program in 12 hours +.

While studying electronics I turned up for an exam one day with concussion, having suffered repeated hits to the head the previous afternoon. I probably should have been in hospital. The exam was 50 questions, multi choice, with 3 hours to complete it. Most of the questions involved calculating values of current, voltage etc in electronic circuits. I completed it in about 5 minutes – anyone watching me would have thought I had memorised the answers as I would just look at the question and mark off the answer.

So, parents and teachers of the next generation of children be warned. Without wasting most of their mind maintaining destructive archetypes they could be quite fast learners!

If I can use the comparison to personal computers one more time, we all run the same processor and we all use the same operating system and software. Yet, like all PC’s we all complete mental tasks at different speeds. In a PC it is easy to look up the task manager and see what background tasks are taking all the processing time and making the foreground task run so slowly compared to another machines with less background tasks running. Not so easy with a human.

Yet it is the same process that determines our IQ and speed and ability on other tasks. The more of our mental functions that are taken up maintaining the collective imagination, and the more of our humanity repressed as part of our cultural beliefs, the lower our IQ will test. So IQ is more a test of our Ego than our intelligence, if I can use Freud’s term in that context. I prefer to think of IQ as a measure of rebelliousness against the silly rules our cultures run on. Vive la rebellion!

But as the models I have used show, we have available as much of our fellow humans spare mental capacity as we need, so will there ever be any way of measuring just one persons total intelligence? I doubt it – why would you bother?